Telemundo announces new curriculum & students for 2007 Taller Telemundo: Actores.

Telemundo in an alliance with Miami Dade College, North Campus formally presented the curriculum and the new 35 students selected for the first session of “Taller Telemundo: Actores,” a spinoff of the highly successful educational initiative “Taller Telemundo: Escritores,” at an event held today at the college in Miami, Florida.

“We have set the standard for discovering and developing new behind-the-scenes talent through the success of Taller Telemundo: Escritores,” said Don Browne, President, Telemundo. “This acting workshop is a natural progression for the program to offer similar opportunities to great aspiring actors whose long time dreams have been to be in Spanish-language television.”

Taller Telemundo: Actores is an innovative educational program designed to inspire, discover and train aspiring television actors. Now offering its fourth successful course (the first three being focused on the development of aspiring TV writers), Telemundo partners once again with education to expand to another artistic discipline: acting. Under the direction of Academy Award and Golden Globe nominee Adriana Barraza and Mimi Belt, VP Artistic Development for Taller Telemundo, the network has created a dynamic new curriculum that specifically prepares and trains aspiring actors for the television medium, with a focus on appealing to the diverse, fast-growing U.S.-Hispanic audience.

Telemundo executives, writers, directors, producers and accomplished actors will play an integral role in the students’ training, through specialized seminars. Creative and challenging acting exercises and hands-on training are designed to effectively inspire and prepare successful alumni of this exciting new program to become a part of the fast-growing Spanish-language entertainment industry.

“We are delighted to join with Telemundo once again in an effort to provide potential Hispanic actors with an unparalleled opportunity for advancement,” said Miami Dade North Campus President, Dr. José Vicente. “The Actores program is a wonderful example of the enrichment that results from productive partnerships between the College and the broader business community.”

The course is conducted in two phases. The initial phase consists of four weeks of intense instruction, 20 hours per week, for a total of 80 classroom hours. During this time, Director Adriana Barraza and a team of instructors and industry professionals, will train and develop the students in various critical areas of television acting: 1) acting techniques; 2) script analysis and interpretation; 3) acting for the camera; 4) movement; 5) voice and diction (neutral diction), with an emphasis on developing an awareness and appeal for the diverse U.S. Spanish-speaking television audience.

After carefully evaluating their classroom performance on a daily basis, the students will be given a scene to perform in mid October 2007. All students who finish this portion of the program will receive a Certificate of Completion for Phase I, and the combined results of their classroom and performance evaluations will dictate which students are invited to advance to Phase II of the course. Only a select group of students advance to Phase II.

Throughout the final two-month phase (160 classroom hours), the top students will receive more intensive training, which will include improvisation and acting exercises in both drama and comedy, as well as scenes specifically written for the telenovela genre. Many of their classroom exercises will take place in a TV studio.

The online application process commenced on June 18, 2007 and ended on July 13, 2007. Applicants were required to complete a thorough application on Yahoo!Telemundo.com, respond to a series of questions, and submit a photo and resume. Nearly 1,200 applications were received from 20 U.S. States and 27 countries, some as far away as Australia, Romania, Bulgaria, Israel, and Norway.

Following a review and evaluation of the online applications, more than 200 semi-finalists were chosen and asked to submit a one-minute taped monologue. A panel of Telemundo executives, led by Ms. Barraza and Ms. Belt, selected nearly 90 finalists from this pool, who were invited to participate in a Final Audition in Miami, Florida. A total of 35 actors were ultimately selected.

Taller Telemundo: Actores 2007 will culminate in December 2007 with a commencement ceremony that will introduce the top graduates of Telemundo’s inaugural acting course.